I was intrigued by the narrator’s praise of Belphoebe at the end of Book 3, Canto 5. When Spenser was writing The Faerie Queene, Queen Elizabeth was known for her cult following that focused on her status as a virgin. Here, Belphoebe is exalted for her “chastity and vertue virginall, / That shall embellish more [her] beautie bright” (3.5.53.6–7), meaning that her chastity only makes her more beautiful. It seems that virginity gets its value from the way men deem it a quality; somewhat ironically, being chaste makes the woman more beautiful and revered in men’s eyes.

In book 3 canto 1, Arthur and Sir Guyon chase after Florimell with the intention of saving her, as well as marrying her as we discussed in class. They were not able to fight off their temptation, but I find it interesting that later on in book 3 we find out that Britomart was not distracted by Florimell because she had to fulfill her own quest: to find her destined husband, Artegall. It seems as if Britomart, Sir Guyon, and Arthur are on the same chase. Although Britomart knows Artegall will be her husband as told by Merlin, is she able to fight her temptation of love? It is clear that she isn’t able to because Glauce is concerned about Britomart, and she is described as having a sickness:

Old Glauce call, to cure this Lady’s Grief:
Full many ways she sought, but none could find,
Nor Herbs, nor Charms, nor Counsel, that is chief
And choicest Med’cine for sick Heart’s Relief

In reading Spenser, I have been keeping the Bechdel Test in mind: that is, whether the work features two women discussing something other than a man or a boy. Our reading for Monday comes close, yet does not quite pass the test. Venus stumbles upon Diana and her nymphs in the woods while searching for her lost son, Cupid. Venus asks for their help in finding Cupid; Diana responds rather cattily that Cupid has aided Venus in her evil tricks, so she’s now getting what she bargained for. Venus persists, saying: “Faire sister, ill beseems it to upbrayd/ A dolefull heart with so disdainfull pride;/ The like that mine, may be your paine another tide” (3.6.21.187-189). So, the two are discussing a boy, therefore the conversation does not square with the Bechdel qualification. But there is something interesting here about entreating a common sisterhood: Venus addresses Diana as her sister, and presses that this–implicitly motherly–pain may inflict Diana another time. I’m interested in further exploring how women characters in the poem interact with one another.

In Book 1, I was struck by Spenser’s attention to detail and use of imagery–which would sometime span many stanzas, often making it more challenging to follow the plot. It seems, though, that when Spenser relies upon imagery and description he is directly invoking the use of sources into his poems, a technique that Chaucer and his contemporaries often used. In particular, Spenser uses the Mixed-Forest technique in the 8th and 9th stanzas of the first canto to describe the garden or forest. As the footnote says, Spenser is imitating Chaucer’s use of the rhetorical device, who originally got the idea from Ovid. Upon a closer examination of Chaucer’s use of the device in Parliament of Fowls (which I did last year for a paper in Professor Solberg’s Chaucer course), the mixed-forest serves a broaden purpose than simply idealizing nature, but uses the technique to represent broader ideas about love, philosophy, experience and knowledge. I wonder if upon closer examination of Spenser’s use of the technique if he falls more in line with Ovid or Chaucer. Finally, Spenser’s continual use of sources and classical and biblical references also further illuminates his and his contemporaries’ thoughts on invention vs. copia.

I thought Una’s encouragement for the Knight during the fight with Error was very interesting. As he is getting beat, she yells, “Now now Sir knight, she what ye bee, Add faith unto your force, and be not faint (1.1.19.164-165)”. Because of her strong warnings against his entering the den, it would be easy for her to have made certain that he knew she was right. She does come close to saying this, but in a more encouraging way. It comes across more as, “You said you could handle it, and I know you can. Now prove it.” This shows the strong unwavering support she has for the Knight during this episode.

I have also been thinking about the note that Woolf considered Spenser an early feminist. Not only does Spenser explicitly promote chastity and demonize female sexuality, he uses female adjectives to describe ill-willed creatures in the poem. In the first canto of Book I, Error is described as “Halfe like a serpent horribly displaide/ But th’ other halfe did womans shape retain,/ Most lothsom, filthie, foule, and full of vile disdaine.” (1.1.14.124-126). Duessa, in the next canto, is “a cruell witch” and “a false sorceresse,/ That many errant knights hath brought to wretchedness” (1.2.33.289;34.305-6). These descriptions could be read as providing women with more agency than we have seen in other contemporary poetry. However, it seems that Spenser could be merely adding a third archetype to the ones allowed for women: virgin, whore, and monster.

Hi Kacie,

I agree with you that the depiction of women within the text appears to be questionable as being particularly feminist–or at least what we would think of today as being feminist. I think that the seeming contradiction you are getting at–that Spenser seems to both advocate for women’s leadership while also advocating for extreme chastity–makes sense when approaching the text as a glorification of Queen Elizabeth, as we discussed in class. In this context, promoting chastity as the supreme feminine virtue while also expressing the strength of exceptional women works when both concepts were part of the image Queen Elizabeth cultivated. One part of Book III that stood out to me along similar lines was in stanza 7 where the narrator comforts Guyon when Britomart  knocked him off his horse: “For not thy fault, but secret powre unseen,/That speare enchaunted was, which layd thee on the greene” (3.1.7.62-63). In the next stanza, the narrator tells Guyon that he would be embarrassed if he realized “that of a single damzell thou wert met” (3.1.8.67). Essentially, it is shameful if a man is overthrown by a woman, but in this case it appears to be somewhat okay because Britomart has an ‘enchaunted’ weapon. This type of thinking allows for the continuing of a general rule–women should not overthrow men–while also saying that in this instance, it’s alright because the reason is outside of anyone’s control. This seems to go along with a justification for a woman to reign as an exception to a general rule and is reminiscent of Queen Elizabeth’s speech where she refers to God’s decision to make her Queen, even though normally the kingdom would be entrusted to a man.

I also struggled (and continue to struggle) with not only interpreting, but following the poem. One way that I found it helpful to engage with the text is by utilizing our secondary source, the Hamilton article. For example, I found that Hamilton’s remarks that Virginia Woolf considered Spenser a feminist and that his first intended readership may have been female (4) to be an interesting lens through which to read parts of Book III. In particular, it appears that Spenser is catering to a female audience in the opening of the second Canto with his remarks that women were once powerful “till envious Men fearing their rules decay / Gan coyne streight laws to curb their liberty” (801). This line seems to almost critique patriarchy, yet in the previous Canto, Spenser spends a lot of time critiquing a woman for expressing sexuality, essentially curbing her liberty as much as the men in his poem. I am not sure how these moments are meant to relate to one another. Are they meant to be subversive in relation to one another? Or is this relationship hypocritical and / or paradoxical?

I am too finding this to be a difficult reading. On a literary level, the density of the text renders me pretty incapable of enjoying Spenser’s usage of the English language. Spenser is clearly a master of the poetic form, but I’m finding it difficult to dig at all into these pleasantries. Having said this, part of my difficulties stem from my inexperience in reading epic poems from this time period. Indeed, I often need to spend a great deal of time to figure out what is going on in the plot of our average class sonnet – with poetry of this length and of this density, establishing and maintaining the narrative arc of the story is, for me, a success in and of itself. Tl;dr I’m finding The Faerie Queene hard to read as an English student because I’m having a hard enough time trying to maintain an understanding of the plot. I feel like any literary analysis I attempt to offer on this epic is bound to fall short. I wish I could offer you some help, but I’m struggling to find an entry point myself.

Hi Raisa,

Thanks for bringing that question up – I’m having a lot of difficulty with The Faerie Queene as well. I’m still working on finding a specific part that I want to respond to, but something really technical that helped me was reading parts of it out loud. Maybe it doesn’t work for everyone (and it certainly is too much to read everything out loud), but reading the more dense stanzas out loud personally helped me in a lot of ways. First, it forced me to slow down, which heightened my awareness of Spenser’s many references and imagery. Second – perhaps because that culture was still very rooted in oral tradition? – it somehow helped me to make better sense of the language/text.

I don’t know if this will help, but good luck!